Carbon fee encourages new technologies

The hydrogen fuel-cell engine of the new Toyota Mirai is seen March 13 at Air Products headquarters in Trexlertown. Air Products is developing hydrogen fuel stations for California.

The hydrogen fuel-cell engine of the new Toyota Mirai is seen March 13 at Air Products headquarters in Trexlertown. Air Products is developing hydrogen fuel stations for California. (CHRIS SHIPLEY, SPECIAL TO THE MORNING CALL)

Opinion: Why carbon fee and dividend is good policy

It's encouraging to read that Air Products, with its hydrogen fueling stations, is a technological leader in efforts to slow climate change, and that U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent supports Air Products by advocating alternative-fuel-vehicle tax credits.

Dent calls for "a level playing field" and says "let the marketplace decide" which new technologies can be price competitive.

Current market prices do not incorporate the costly environmental impacts of fossil fuels, including air pollution, spills, explosions and global warming. A price on carbon is the market approach advocated by most economists to correct this omission.

Carbon fee and dividend is an elegantly simple market-price correction that encourages new technologies, grows the economy, and cuts the use of greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels. Carbon fee and dividend works uniformly throughout the economy, rather than just one sector at a time, without a complicated bureaucracy or a maze of subsidies and tax credits. George Shultz, formerly a high-ranking official in Ronald Reagan's cabinet, says carbon fee and dividend is the solution Reagan himself would advocate.

Without compromising ideology, both Republicans and Democrats can and should support carbon fee and dividend. I urge Reps. Dent and Cartwright and Sens. Toomey and Casey to all get behind carbon fee and dividend.